WordPress is enormously popular for blogs and full websites thanks to an awesome eco system which has built up around it, the simplicity (relatively) of getting it up and running plus the flexibility to “bend it” in all sorts of directions. When I say bend, check out the following which are all WordPress sites

• My “back up blog” http://iupdateable.wordpress.com/ 
• My groups “odd site” :) http://ubelly.com
• My favourite “cheap games” site http://www.frugalgaming.co.uk/ 

WordPress users typically run their sites on Linux and MySQL, although PHP (the language in which WordPress is written) can be happily run on Windows. Both fine technologies in their own right, but for me (and probably a fair few others) I would love to use WordPress but with the technologies I know best (aka Windows, IIS and SQL Server). However, that has proven to be actually rather tricky in practice to get working – until now.

Earlier last month OmniTI released a patch for WordPress which provides SQL Server and SQL Azure support.  In parallel with that some fine folks inside Microsoft have also created http://wordpress.visitmix.com which contains information about running WordPress on the Microsoft platform with a particular focus on SQL Server and SQL Azure.  Top stuff!

To run WordPress with SQL Server:

• Download and Install the WordPress on SQL Server Distro/Patch

And then you will quite likely need to migrate:

• Check out how to Migrate to Windows and SQL Server by Zach Owens who is moving his blog to Windows and SQL Server

Enjoy

Related Links

• Running PHP on IIS on Windows http://php.iis.net/ 

If PHP is not your thing, then the following Blog engines are .NET based

• BlogEngine http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
• DasBlog http://www.dasblog.info/
• Subtext http://subtextproject.com/ (which happens to power http://geekswithblogs.net where my main blog is http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable)